Google Says It Will Start Downranking Non-Tablet Apps In the Play Store (arstechnica.com) 50
The big news is that the search results will switch to a two-pane layout on big screens. The search result list will live on the left-hand side, and tapping on each result will load a details page on the right. Previously, the results page was a stretched-out phone interface, with results on the left and nothing on the right. It would be nice if the top charts got this two-pane design, too, but that hasn't changed yet. Google says these changes are "just the beginning of our journey in creating a tailored Play Store experience for large screens." So hopefully, Google's developers will follow Google's developer guidelines soon.
Android Phones Can Now Tell You If There's an AirTag Following You 63
For now, if an AirTag you don't own "is separated from its owner and determined to be traveling with you," a notification will tell you this and that "the owner of the tracker can see its location." Tapping the notification brings up a map tracing back to where it was first seen traveling with you. Google notes that this location data "is always encrypted and never shared with Google." Further into the prompts, you can make the tracker play a sound, "without the owner of the tracker knowing," Google says. If you bring the tracker to the back of your phone (presumably within NFC range), some trackers may provide their serial number and information about their owner, "like the last four digits of their phone number." Google indicates it will also link to information about how to physically disable a tracker. Finally, Google is offering a manual scan feature, if you're suspicious that your Android phone isn't catching a tracker or want to see what's nearby. The alerts are rolling out through a Google Play services update to devices on Android 6.0 and above over the coming weeks. Google is working to finish the joint tracking specification "by the end of this year."
The company added: "At this time, we've made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented protections for iOS."
Google's Nightmare 'Web Integrity API' Wants a DRM Gatekeeper For the Web 163
The goal of the project is to learn more about the person on the other side of the web browser, ensuring they aren't a robot and that the browser hasn't been modified or tampered with in any unapproved ways. The intro says this data would be useful to advertisers to better count ad impressions, stop social network bots, enforce intellectual property rights, stop cheating in web games, and help financial transactions be more secure. Perhaps the most telling line of the explainer is that it "takes inspiration from existing native attestation signals such as [Apple's] App Attest and the [Android] Play Integrity API." Play Integrity (formerly called "SafetyNet") is an Android API that lets apps find out if your device has been rooted.
Root access allows you full control over the device that you purchased, and a lot of app developers don't like that. So if you root an Android phone and get flagged by the Android Integrity API, several types of apps will just refuse to run. You'll generally be locked out of banking apps, Google Wallet, online games, Snapchat, and some media apps like Netflix. [...] Google wants the same thing for the web. Google's plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an "environment attestation" test before you get any data. At this point your browser would contact a "third-party" attestation server, and you would need to pass some kind of test. If you passed, you would get a signed "IntegrityToken" that verifies your environment is unmodified and points to the content you wanted unlocked. You bring this back to the web server, and if the server trusts the attestation company, you get the content unlocked and finally get a response with the data you wanted.
Android's Now Better Than iOS, Instagram Boss Says (businessinsider.com) 137
Many People Don't Actually Like Their Car's Infotainment Systems (theverge.com) 110
Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle's built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car's native controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls...
[I]t seems like most people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years... But it seems like people are warming up to native operating systems, as long as they're developed by Google and not the automaker. JD Power found that models that have Android Automotive with Google Automotive's operating system, AAOS, "score higher in the infotainment category than those with no AAOS whatsoever."
But here's where things get kind of weird: AAOS without Google Automotive Services (GAS) receives the lowest scores for infotainment of the three categories. Google Automotive Services refers to all the apps and services that come with the car when Google is built into the car — also known as "Google built-in." Ford, GM, and Volvo have all said they will use GAS for their current and upcoming vehicles... That's surely music to GM's ears, which recently made the controversial decision to block access to CarPlay and Android Auto in its future EV lineup in favor of a native Google infotainment system.
ChromeOS 115 Rolling Out: Android App Streaming, PDF Signatures (9to5google.com) 4
Android apps, which open in a phone-sized window, can be launched via the Phone Hub where you get a row of Recent apps at the bottom of the panel with the ability to browse all compatible "Apps from your phone." Applications can also open when you tap through a messaging notification. When opening PDFs in the Gallery app, ChromeOS 115 adds a signature tool. Appearing next to Draw in the top toolbar, you can add a signature, which is much easier with a touchscreen than a trackpad and save it for future use. You can place it in any document and resize the signature to ensure line fit. Lastly, Google has updated the keyboard Shortcuts app with "new navigation and taxonomy," improved search, and a "refreshed shortcut visualization" that better shows what to press.
Meanwhile, this is unmentioned in the stable release notes, but ChromeOS 115 is testing better windowing options in the beta channel. Hovering over the expand/minimize button in the top-right corner control group will show you a new layout menu. There's Split (half), Partial, Full and Float. That last option is new and makes it so that the window is always on top, just like Picture-in-Picture (PiP) for video. The other options were previously accessed by dragging a window and moving to the left/right side of the screen until an overlay appears. This approach is much more accessible and hopefully sees a wide launch soon. The announcement can be read here.
Google Messages To Support MLS Protocol For Interoperable E2E Encrypted Messaging (9to5google.com) 21
Google says MLS would make possible "practical interoperability across services and platforms, scaling to groups of thousands of multi-device users." This could "unleash a huge field of new opportunities for the users and developers of interoperable messaging services that adopt it."; It is also flexible enough to allow providers to address emerging threats to user privacy and security, such as quantum computing. Google plans to build MLS into its Messages app, which offers E2EE 1:1 and group RCS chats today, and "support its wide deployment across the industry by open sourcing our implementation in the Android codebase." How RCS factors into this remains to be seen.
Google Releases Nearby Share, Its Android AirDrop Clone for Windows (pcworld.com) 20
Nearby Share connects your phone to your PC, but it can also be used for you to send files and photos to nearby Android phones that you don't use, as well as to nearby PCs. That makes it handy for simply sharing a photo at a concert, or dropping a file onto a friend's PC without hassle. You'll just need to be within about 16 feet to do so, Google says. Why use Nearby Share? Google's unspoken argument is that it's simpler to do so. There are already numerous ways to view and transfer files and photos from Android phones to PCs, from the tried-and-true sneakerware to uploading and downloading from the cloud, to more modern approaches like Microsoft's Your Phone, now called Phone Link. Device makers like Samsung also have released their own specific versions for Galaxy devices. Google, though, made its mark with Gmail and search, both functions that worked more simply and effectively than other solutions.
Threads Usage Drops By Half From Initial Surge (similarweb.com) 167
- By Friday, July 14, Threads was down to 23.6 million active users, or about 22% of Twitter's audience.
- Usage in the US, which saw the most activity, peaked at about 21 minutes of engagement with the app on July 7. By July 14, that was down to a little over 6 minutes.
- In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, Thursday and Friday, web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week. Although traffic bounced back, for the most recent 7 days of data it's still down 11% year-over-year.
- On the days of peak interest in Threads, Twitter's Daily active users on Android, worldwide, were virtually unchanged, but time spent was down 4.3% -- perhaps because some users were off trying Threads. Even with that drop, however, the average total time spent on Twitter was about 25 minutes.
To a large extent, Threads solves the "empty party problem" that makes it tough to start a new online community by allowing Instagram users to instantly create a Threads account, bringing their existing contacts with them. Our daily usage numbers make Meta's claim of having achieved more than 100 million total account signups in a matter of days seem reasonable. However, Threads is missing many basic features and still needs to offer a compelling reason to switch from Twitter or start a new social media habit with Threads.
How We Got Addicted To Weather Apps (theguardian.com) 51
Fifty per cent of US smartphone users regularly use weather apps; according to Statista, weather apps will make approximately $1.5bn in revenue in 2023, a leap from $530m in 2017. Jeremiah Lasquety-Reyes, a senior analyst for Statista, says this new weather app ecosystem is only going to grow, owing to the climate crisis, as well as a general trend towards "digitizing one's life and schedule." There are certainly plenty out there, catering to a variety of needs: more than 10,000 apps have the word "weather" in the title in Android and iPhone app stores.
It's Official: Smartphones Will Need To Have Replaceable Batteries By 2027 (androidauthority.com) 283
Here are some other rules this new law covers related to phones with replaceable batteries:
- Collection of waste: OEMs will need to collect 63% of portable batteries that would normally go to a landfill by the end of 2027. By the end of 2030, that number should be at 73%.
- Recovery of waste: Lithium recovery from waste batteries will need to be at 50% by 2027. By the end of 2031, it should be at 80%, meaning 80% of the lithium inside a battery can be recovered and repurposed for new batteries.
- Recycling minimums: Industrial, SLI, and EV batteries will need to be made up of certain percentages of recycled content. Initially, this will be 16% for cobalt, 85% for lead, 6% for lithium, and 6% for nickel.
- Early recycling efficiency target: Nickel-cadmium batteries should have a recycling efficiency target of 80% by the end of 2025. All other batteries should be at a 50% efficiency target by 2025.
Fairphone 3 Gets Seven Years of Updates, Besting Every Other Android OEM (arstechnica.com) 34
The company announced today that the Fairphone 3, which was released in 2019, has had its support extended to 2026, making for seven years of updates. The company also just released Android 13 for the Fairphone 3. Google's own 2019 phone, the Pixel 4, shut down support in October 2022. Fairphone strives to make sustainable smartphones, designing its products to be repairable and also offering replacement parts for sale online. Part of that sustainability mission is an absolutely herculean effort to keep the Android updates flowing, even when Qualcomm drops critical software support for the SoC. Fairphone says the Snapdragon 632 SoC in the Fairphone 3 was only supported up to Android 11, so continuing to support the Fairphone 3 meant doing the upgrades all by itself.
Android Phone Hits 24GB of RAM, As Much As a 13-Inch MacBook Pro (arstechnica.com) 60
The design is interesting -- it's just all right angles without a single smoothed-over edge on the entire phone. The sides are flat, the back is flat, and the corners are super tall, with almost no corner radius at all. In landscape mode, there are touch-sensitive shoulder buttons along the top edge for additional gaming controls, but it does not look comfortable to have to wrap your fingers around those hard corners. Just picture the smooth curves of an SNES controller compared to this thing -- even the example image does not look very comfortable. For color options, it comes in black, silver, or a clear back panel with a faux-mechanical design under it, just like a Nothing Phone. That little rainbow circle on the back is a spinning, 20,000 RPM blower fan that pushes heat out the side, so you'll presumably be gaming with cool temps for a long time. The phone is up for pre-order today in China and ships on July 11.
The User-Repairable Fairphone 4 Is Finally Coming To the US (theverge.com) 65
The Murena Fairphone 4 will ship to US customers with 5G and dual SIM support, a removable 3905mAh battery, a 48-megapixel main camera, a 48-megapixel ultrawide, and a 25-megapixel selfie camera. The phones will be available to order exclusively from Murena's webstore starting today. The Murena Fairphone 4 also comes with the /e/ operating system preinstalled, which is described as a privacy-focused, Google-free mobile ecosystem for folks who want to avoid handing any data over to the search giant. Instead of the usual Google apps, the Fairphone 4 will come with a range of default Murena Cloud apps for things like email, calendar, and cloud storage as well as a dedicated app store that highlights the privacy ratings of each app to help users monitor how their online activity is being tracked.
The Fairphone comes unlocked, but the press release mentions that T-Mobile and other operators based on T-Mobile's network are the only US carriers recommended to be used with the device. Fairphone is also providing an extended five-year warranty for the hardware, and /e/OS is similarly committed to fixing bugs and supporting security and feature updates for five years. The Murena version is the only Fairphone 4 model being introduced to the US, and there's no mention of the standard Android OS model joining it anytime soon.
Meta Launches New Social Media App 'Threads' To Rival Twitter (theverge.com) 45
The web interface is fairly basic right now for viewing threads, with options to like, comment, repost, and share -- all prompting you to download the mobile app for the time being. If you're in an unsupported country, like markets in the EU, then you'll only be able to view threads right now. Much like Twitter, you can view an account's main posts in one section and the full reply history in another.
Fediverse integration won't be available immediately at the launch of Threads, but it's clear Instagram is looking to add this soon. Profiles include an Instagram username and link, with a threads.net label that includes the following description: "Soon, you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other fediverse platforms, like Mastodon. They can also find people on Threads using full usernames, like @zuck@threads.net."
Firefox 115 Released (mozilla.org) 61
* Hardware video decoding is now enabled for Intel GPUs on Linux..
* Migrating from another browser? Now you can bring over payment methods you've saved in Chrome-based browsers to Firefox.
* The Tab Manager dropdown now features close buttons, so you can close tabs more quickly.
* The Firefox for Android address bar's new search button allows you to easily switch between search engines and search your bookmarks and browsing history.
* We've refreshed and streamlined the user interface for importing data in from other browsers.
* Users without platform support for H264 video decoding can now fallback to Cisco's OpenH264 plugin for playback.
But the most important feature is that this release is the new ESR. Why this is important? y'all ask, well:
* Many a "downstream" project depends on Firefox ESR, for example the famous email client Thunderbird, or KaiOS (a mobile OS very popular in India, SE Asia, Africa and LatAm), so, for better or worse, whatever made it to (or is lacking from) this version of the browser, those projects have to use for the next year.
* Firefox ESR is the default browser of many distros, like Debian and Kali Linux, so, whatever made it to this version will be there for next year, ditto to whatever is lacking.
* If you are on old -- unsupported OSs, like Windows 7, 8-8.1 or MacOS 10.14 (Mojave, the last MacOS with support for 32 Bit Apps), 10.13 or 10.12 you will automatically be migrated to Firefox ESR, so this will be your browser until Sept. 2024.
Robot Takes Podium as Orchestra Conductor in South Korea (cnn.com) 31
Meta Is Planning To Let People In the EU Download Apps Through Facebook (theverge.com) 28
Meta's pitch to developers participating in the pilot is that, by hosting their Android apps and letting Facebook users download them directly without being kicked out to the Play Store, they'll see higher conversion rates for their app install ads. At least initially, Meta doesn't plan to take a cut of in-app revenue from participating apps, so developers in the pilot could still use whatever billing systems they want.
Google Kills Its 'Project Iris' Augmented Reality Glasses (theverge.com) 34
Insider reports that that Project Iris was plagued by layoffs and shifting strategies during development, and Google's head of VR/AR Clay Bavor notably left the company four months ago. Kurt Akeley, a distinguished engineer who we reported was attached to the project, is now listed as "retired" on his LinkedIn page. Two others are still listed as being involved with AR, including Mark Lucovsky, the company's senior director of operating systems for AR.